NOA, CSOs want counter-narratives to end insurgency

The Director-General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Dr Garba Abari, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and other stakeholders, have advocated intensified efforts on counter narratives to end violent extremism in Nigeria.

They made the call at the inauguration of “Time to tell the Truth Campaign” by Truth Alliance, a coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) and critical stakeholders in Northeast Nigeria and in Niger Republic, on Wednesday in Abuja.

Abari said the issue of violent extremism had taken a toll on Nigeria’s landscape in so many forms like social, economic, and political dislocations which he said had become of great concern not only to Nigeria but across the entire West African region.

He said that violent extremism activated by the Boko

Haram and Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) had also become part of a global terrorist franchise.

According to him, to actually beginning to tell the truth in addition to what has been done by the government, civil society and donor agencies are to have a deeper interrogation of the processes leading up to what we are seeing today.

Abari said the Borno Model of the state government had in recent time attracted a large turn out of the repentant Boko Haram terrorists in their thousands who had surrendered.

He said the Federal Government had also developed a home grown response to reducing the fighting capacity of Boko Haram under the Operation Safe Corridor as a direct policy response to get them out, deradicalise them.

He said the inauguration was an attempt to interrogate how far the efforts had reduced the fighting ability of those elements that had taken arms against the states.

“We in NOA have a sense that we must actually begin to complement the efforts of what the Neen Foundation and Truth Alliance are doing to get community buy in.

“This is because, it is important that to deradicalise, reintegrate or integrate as the case may be, it must be community driven, because the community is essentially the very first recipient of the devastation of this.

“How do we strike the very delicate balance between the feeling of the victim and that of the perpetrator? Because this is a very hot potato in the hand of Government, the donor agencies and peace building institutions.

“Boko Haram is an ideologically driven rebellion against the state and what we in the National Orientation Agency have just have discovered is counter narrative and this is one thing that neither government nor all was involved in countering violent extremism.

“Dealing with terror groups have succeeded over the years but alternative narrative is one area that we need to emphasise and develop more competencies and the capacity around it,” he said.

The Federal Commissioner, National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, Imam Sulaiman-Ibrahim, said that violence, extremists, had perpetrated mass atrocities, internal displacement and refugees.

Sulaiman-Ibrahim, who was represented by his Chief of Staff. Ms Grace Ukpong, said that the commission’s responsibility was to protect and assist victims of violence, especially the IDPs and refugees.

Court bars INEC from contracting MC Oluomo for electoral items distribution

By Musa Baba Adamu

The Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has granted an order restraining the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from engaging, using, or further dealing with the chairman of the Lagos Parks and Garages, Musiliu Akinsanya, better known as MC Oluomo, in the distribution of election materials and ad-hoc staff for the forthcoming polls in the state.

The injunction was granted by Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke following an application filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its gubernatorial candidate in Lagos State, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour.

A lawyer for the Labour Party told the court that the commission was served with the court papers.

In urging the court to grant the interim order, the applicant’s counsel moved the application with an affidavit of urgency and told the court the grounds for orders sought included the fact that his clients will be severely threatened by a lack of free and fair elections in Lagos State, adding that “it is in the interest of justice to restrain INEC from taking any step or further steps that may foist a fait accompli on the substantive suit.”

After listening to the counsel, Justice Aneke granted the application for abridgement of time and adjourned the hearing of the substantive suit to February 22, while ordering that all the processes in the suit be served on INEC.

INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Lagos, Olusegun Agbaje, had earlier in February, said the electoral body would work with the Lagos State Parks Management Committee headed by MC Oluomo for the distribution of election materials and personnel across the state.